welcome to the World of educational outsourcing

Washington, May 16 (UNI) Welcome to the latest trend in the world of outsourcing. With the students in the US increasingly relying on overseas tutors, online tutoring has become the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries.

The US demand for overseas tutors is creating such a thriving industry in India that about 80 per cent of India's 5 million dollars online tutoring industry is focused on students in the United States, according to a report in the Washington Post today.

It said that thousands of US students rely on tutors, especially in India and China, to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock.

Tutoring companies contend that if low-paid workers in China and India can sew your clothes, process your medical bills and answer your computer questions, why can't they teach your children, too? Educational outsourcing, as it has come to be known, has become even more contentious as companies try to tap into the millions of dollars available under the 'No Child Left Behind Act' a program set up by the Bush administration to ensure education for all. Funds under this program is made available for tutorials (remedial tutoring as it is known in the US) to help students weak in any subject like mathematics, algebra, trignometry etc.

Studyloft.com, a Chicago-based tutoring company with more than 6,000 clients, and a California-based company -Growing Stars, hope to qualify for those funds. More than 400 students have enrolled with Growing Stars, whose 50 tutors, most of them with master's degrees, work in an office in Cochin.

Most of the US students are very happy getting help from their overseas tutors. They say they got A grades in mathematics and Statistics and also have high Sat scores because of the tutoring they got from Indian teachers.

However, educational outsourcing, like the rest of the outsourcing business, has come in for severe criticism in the US.

The Post quoted Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues at the American Federation of Teachers as saying that ''We don't believe that education should become a business of outsourcing.

When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me.'' More UNI XC PR MIR RS1009